Apple, which did not much care for the Indian market under Steve Jobs, has suddenly become aggressive in the country in recent months with aggressive marketing and advertising, expansion of sales networks to include small local retailers, launching EMI schemes to make iPhones and iPads more affordable... All this have already helped it become the country's second-largest smartphone supplier in the last quarter on 2012 with a 15.6% share in revenue, according to IDC data.

In the previous quarter it was not even in the top 5! Apple India's revenues rose three folds to more than Rs 2,000 crore in FY12 and analysts expect it to cross the $1-billion (approx Rs 5,400 crore) mark this fiscal. As Apple works towards it with attractive discounts and schemes, ET looks at the brains behind this remarkable change in the US tech giant's fortunes in India—Maneesh Dhir, country head of Apple India, and Sanjay Kaul who heads the iPhone business in the country...

Old 'BlackBerry Boy' makes iPhone fit more pockets

Sanjay Kaul, Head (Telecom Business), Apple India

Remember the BlackBerry Boys? The marketing campaign that the Canadian smartphone maker ran three years ago when it changed its business model in India to sell BlackBerry smartphones in the retail market instead through telecom operator had brought the device in the hands of college students and young executives and doubled the brand's market share to more than 12% in a year. Today, one of the executives who then played a critical part in transforming the BlackBerry brand is charting a similar course for yet-another aspirational brand in the country — the Apple iPhone.

Sanjay Kaul, former director of channel sales at BlackBerry India, has transformed the way iPhone is sold in India since he took over as head (telecom business) at Apple India 15 months ago. Just like BlackBerry, he localised iPhone distribution, making it available at small local retail shops instead of betting only on mobile operators. Add to it aggressive marketing, special finance schemes to make payment in monthly installments and even discount on iPhone4 through an exchange scheme that offers at least Rs 7,000 for a smartphone.

In his role, Kaul is responsible for everything about the iPhone in India from expansion of sales, distribution, marketing and operator partnerships. He works closely with Maneesh Dhir, country manager at Apple India.

Kaul, 40, politely refused to be interviewed for this story, attributing it to company policy.

The chief of a top retail chain said Kaul has successfully bridged the gap between the desire to own the iPhone and its affordability.

"Probably, Sanjay's biggest achievement is the way he has managed to negotiate with Apple headquarters in Cupertino on adopting localised marketing strategies in India," the person said requesting not to be named. "He is not just a hard task master but is good at negotiating with senior managers. He had done it with BlackBerry, which saw the results. And so is now Apple."

After joining Apple, the first thing Sanjay did was to engage with trade partners to understand where Apple was faltering in India. It was on two fronts -- availability and pricing. Last September, it appointed two retail distributors, Redington and Ingram Micro, which brought more than 10,000 key retail points for the brand, while the recent cash-back offer made on the iPhone4 available at a compelling price of as low as Rs 16,500.

Thanks to all this, iPhone shipment to India has jumped three-fold in the last six months and Apple has became the second largest smartphone brand by value in the country in the last quarter of 2012 as per last IDC reports. As per sales tracker GfK, iPhone's value market share in India has gone up from 4% to 9.3% between December 2012 and February 2013.

Amit Mathur, head of international operations at top Indian handset maker Micromax, said Kaul is a man of details and works closely with retailers. "He is a very pushy character who does not take no for an answer. He is good team worker, can slog for long hours and can push his team also to do the same," said Mathur who worked closely with Kaul in BlackBerry.

A top industry official, however, said the iPhone head has an attitude problem. "Kaul has a huge ego and this has resulted in him clashing with his distributors. At times, this has impacted relationships between company and leading retailers—he sometimes expects too much from them," the person said.

Kaul has already sounded key trade partners on Apple's target to double iPhone's volume market share from 5% now. However, trade partners believe he still has to go a long way in India. They say Apple has one of the lowest retail margin in smartphones, varying anywhere between 3-7% on iPhone as compared to market leader Samsung's 5-15%.